deuce22 Posted February 12, 2020 Share Posted February 12, 2020 Hi. I have been researching for the different retaining wall options and wanted to get some feedback from what others have done. I was originally thinking of Gabion baskets as it was something I could do myself and so I would save on the labour costs. I have now come across mortar free gravity retaining walls and have been told that these are pretty straight forward to do. Has anybody built a retaining wall from this and do they perform well? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Declan52 Posted February 12, 2020 Share Posted February 12, 2020 Do you mean this type of retaining wall??? If so they are pretty easy to build. They require no concrete just a well compacted hardcore base. And then it's just lift and set down and lift and set down. The back of the blocks have a lip so they can't push of the bottom block. Depending on how high you need to go will dictate the size of the blocks you need. The small ones in my front garden can go to 0.9m and that's it. The bigger ones can go to a few metres if you build in membranes along the way. Like all walls like this you need a drain at the back to get rid of any water plus plenty of clean stone like pea gravel to backfill it all in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deuce22 Posted February 12, 2020 Author Share Posted February 12, 2020 Yeah, thats what I was looking at. I think they also look better than gabions. It will be around 2m or so for 2 different areas and then a few more areas that are shorter. How much do the cost in comparison to gabions? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Declan52 Posted February 12, 2020 Share Posted February 12, 2020 They make it pretty close to me so my price won't be anywhere close to what you will get charged. I done my 5+ years ago as well . There are plenty of companies who do this type of block. I got mine from this one. https://ag.uk.com/retaining-wall/anchor-diamond/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conor Posted February 12, 2020 Share Posted February 12, 2020 I had this discussion with my architect last week. We require a couple retaining walls in the region of 2.5m high. The engineers design for reinforced concrete look scary and expensive. However, the interlocking block option works out more expensive and much more time consuming at that scale. Same for gabions, as you end up with a wall just as thick as it is high. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted February 12, 2020 Share Posted February 12, 2020 2 minutes ago, Conor said: I had this discussion with my architect last week. We require a couple retaining walls in the region of 2.5m high. The engineers design for reinforced concrete look scary and expensive. However, the interlocking block option works out more expensive and much more time consuming at that scale. Same for gabions, as you end up with a wall just as thick as it is high. We found the same, especially the space taken up by the wall. We opted for a reinforced concrete filled hollow block retaining wall, that's nearly 3m high at the highest point. The main advantage was that it gave us about 1m more width which pretty much translated directly 1m more width in the house, because space was tight on the plot in that direction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Declan52 Posted February 12, 2020 Share Posted February 12, 2020 2 minutes ago, Conor said: I had this discussion with my architect last week. We require a couple retaining walls in the region of 2.5m high. The engineers design for reinforced concrete look scary and expensive. However, the interlocking block option works out more expensive and much more time consuming at that scale. Same for gabions, as you end up with a wall just as thick as it is high. It would be the quickest method by far off doing a small retaining wall. I done that large wall in a few hours. It's about 15m long by 1.2m high. Once you go over that height then you need to be backfilling as you go which will really slow you down plus building in the membrane. You could step it so have 2 walls at 1.2m. much the same as I done with my front garden but move them closer together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thedreamer Posted February 12, 2020 Share Posted February 12, 2020 I'm needing to build a small retaining wall to get a bit of height to tick the access box on our front door access. Anybody considered using oak sleepers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Temp Posted February 13, 2020 Share Posted February 13, 2020 How high? We used sleepers but ours is only about 1ft high. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deuce22 Posted February 13, 2020 Author Share Posted February 13, 2020 I'll look into it more. I will have plenty of ground behind the wall to do all the back filling required, but building 1.2m at a time is also an option. What depth would you think you'd need before you can build another 1.2m wall? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timedout Posted June 13, 2020 Share Posted June 13, 2020 Get a ground investigation and soils analysis. The aim is to determine the beneficial support inherent in the soils. There is strong possibility that the ground is sufficiently resilient for you to batter back (creating a steep slope rather than a vertical face) and use one of the interlocking precast concrete block systems. It will be way cheaper than a concrete wall. I saw one recently that I am fairly sure was Betoconcept that has planting pockets too. . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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